Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#24333
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Kumiko Aso works on versatility rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Kumiko Aso appears in 9 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Kumiko. Wolf Children is the clearest case: a film rated 7.9 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for mystery, crime, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Ayuko Tsukahara, Masayuki Suzuki, Satoshi Miki and others, Kumiko Aso helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
Wolf Children (2012) as Mrs. Hotta (voice) · The Boy and the Beast (2015) as Kyuta's Mother (voice) · Mirai (2018) as Mother (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #24333 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
9
2012–2024
Career length
12 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.9
Wolf Children
Average Nutevio score
6.9
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.2
Wolf Children
Most frequent director
Mamoru Hosoda
3 films together
Longest collaboration
3×
With Mamoru Hosoda
Most common genre
Drama
5 titles
Average runtime
1h 43m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.8
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.5
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
2010s
7.0 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Aging Police / Resurrection Special, The Wonderland, Fly Me to the Saitama — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
7.0
Across 6 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
7.1
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2010s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Aging Police / Resurrection Special, The Wonderland, Fly Me to the Saitama.
Most productive era
2010s
6 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.63 films | 6.92 films |
| Action | 7.61 film | — |
| Thriller | — | 6.81 film |
| Comedy | 6.32 films | — |
| Crime | 6.01 film | 6.42 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance · Career peak
2012Wolf Children
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Mrs. Hotta (voice). 7.9 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
2024Last Mile
The current state of the argument, as Kikyo Yuzuru.
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
9 of 9 films
as Mrs. Hotta (voice)
Directed by Mamoru Hosoda
as Kyuta's Mother (voice)
Directed by Mamoru Hosoda
as Mother (voice)
Directed by Mamoru Hosoda
as Kokoro's Mother (voice)
Directed by Unknown
as Midori (voice)
Directed by Unknown
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
Loading credits…
The defining work
#1
Mrs. Hotta (voice)
Wolf Children (2012)
Performance score7.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Mrs. Hotta (voice) gives Kumiko Aso a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Kyuta's Mother (voice)
The Boy and the Beast (2015)
Performance score7.4
The Boy and the Beast asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Kyuta's Mother (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Mother (voice)
Mirai (2018)
Performance score7.3
Mirai asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mother (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Kokoro's Mother (voice)
Lonely Castle in the Mirror (2022)
Performance score7.0
Lonely Castle in the Mirror asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Kokoro's Mother (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Mrs. Hotta (voice)
Start here. Wolf Children is the clearest statement of what Kumiko Aso does — accessible, 117 minutes, and rated 7.9 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Kumiko at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
The Boy and the Beast (2015)
Same director as Wolf Children, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Mirai (2018)
Same director as The Boy and the Beast, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
The Wonderland (2019)
Keeps the fantasy register of Mirai but asks for a colder reading of it.
Lonely Castle in the Mirror (2022)
Same director as The Wonderland, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Mamoru Hosoda
Director
3 films together
Notably Wolf Children
Hideki Takeuchi
Director
1 film together
Notably Fly Me to the Saitama
Satoshi Miki
Director
1 film together
Notably Aging Police / Resurrection Special
Masayuki Suzuki
Director
1 film together
Notably Masquerade Night
Ayuko Tsukahara
Director
1 film together
Notably Last Mile
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Mamoru Hosoda
Director
3 films together · 7.6 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 3 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Wolf ChildrenAyuko Tsukahara
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Last MileHideki Takeuchi
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Fly Me to the SaitamaMasayuki Suzuki
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Masquerade NightSatoshi Miki
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Aging Police / Resurrection SpecialSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
Wolf Children
as Mrs. Hotta (voice)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Wolf Children
as Mrs. Hotta (voice)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Wolf Children
as Mrs. Hotta (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Last Mile
as Kikyo Yuzuru
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Wolf Children
as Mrs. Hotta (voice)
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Kumiko Aso has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Modern Classic Performer
Awarded
Defining performances delivered inside the last twenty-five years, in films already being taught rather than merely remembered.
Drama Legend
Awarded
5 catalogue titles in drama, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
Wolf Children
as Mrs. Hotta (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Last Mile
as Kikyo Yuzuru
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Wonderland
as Midori (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Lonely Castle in the Mirror
as Kokoro's Mother (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Boy and the Beast
as Kyuta's Mother (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Boy and the Beast
as Kyuta's Mother (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Mirai
as Mother (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Fly Me to the Saitama
as Maki Sugawara
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Morgan Freeman
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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